The air in the warehouse had gone still.
No one spoke.
Blood had already started to dry in thin, black streaks on the brickwork. Somewhere nearby, water dripped.
Cain crouched in the center of the room, one hand pressed to the cold floor, eyes half-closed.
He was listening.
To the silence.
To the aftermath.
To the weight of what they’d just done.
Lexi moved behind him—slow, quiet. Her chains dragged with each step, a sound too soft for the carnage it followed. When she reached his side, she didn’t look at the bodies. She looked at the blood on her hands like it was something she’d never seen before.
“What…” Her voice cracked, but she didn’t finish the question.
Cain stood.
Lexi turned her face away.
On the far side of the room, Lila watched with her arms crossed, her mouth a tight line. After a moment, she spoke.
“You’re sloppy.”
Cain raised an eyebrow.
“You don’t fight like a thief,” she said.
He walked past her.
“Let’s crush the next one before they realize what’s happening.”
Lila blinked. “You want another one?”
Cain looked at her without smiling. “One isn’t enough. Save a few, and we look like fools. Break the pattern…”
“And you become the pattern,” she finished. Her voice cooled until it sounded almost clinical. “You’re a fire starter.”
“No,” he said, almost offhand. “I just stopped pretending the world wasn’t already on fire.”
“You don’t care about the consequences,” she continued. “If you’re going to act like this, how much longer do you think you can keep helping people?”
“You misunderstand,” he replied, sounding tired. “I’m not here to help people.”
He glanced at Lexi.
“It just so happens that I help people when I get what I want.”
“And what is it you want?”
Cain didn’t answer. Because if he said it out loud, he’d have to believe it.
His eyes unfocused for a moment.
Nick had just finished learning the new skillbook—the one Resh gave them after the Siege Vault.
It felt like a path opened under his feet.
=New Skill Unlocked: Five Mortal Steps=
=Five Mortal Steps=
-Semi-Passive Skill-
->Mana: Variable
->Rank: 1/5
->Description: A high-tier martial movement style composed of five evolving footwork techniques. Each ‘step’ represents a new mastery of motion, allowing the user to interact with space, momentum, and presence in ways that defy conventional rules. This technique was originally designed to enhance a mage’s mobility and survivability, but its true potential lies in raw physical excellence.
To move is to declare intention. To master motion is to declare dominion.
–>First Step: Breakstep – Disengage, launch, or stagger foes with a burst of kinetic force.
The earth rebels against hesitation. Let your first step shatter doubt.
–>Second Step: World-Treader – Reach Rank 2 to unlock this Step.
–>Third Step: Severance Line – Reach Rank 3 to unlock this Step.
–>Fourth Step: Horizon Collapse – Reach Rank 4 to unlock this Step.
–>Fifth Step: Mortal Throne – Reach Rank 5 to unlock this Step.
Cain felt the knowledge settle into his body.
He breathed.
He moved.
—Breakstep.
The air cracked. The floor fractured under his heel like a stone struck by lightning.
He surged forward, not vanishing, but detonating—like a hammer striking space itself. Dust burst from the ground in his wake. Nearby crates rattled. The walls reverberated with the force of his launch.
He stopped three meters ahead, mid-stride and balanced.
A flicker of surprise touched his eyes.
“…Not bad.”
This seemed significantly more ridiculous than other skillbooks he’d seen so far. Next time he saw Resh, he would need to ask a few questions.
Lila rolled her eyes. “So you had a movement technique and didn’t use it until now?”
“Didn’t need it,” he said. “Besides, it’s more dramatic this way.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You’re not untouchable.”
“No,” he replied. “But I have nothing left to lose.”
Lexi flinched slightly at that, but said nothing. Her arms were still slick to the elbow, her chains drooping low. The blood on her wrists had begun to dry, but her expression hadn’t returned. Her face was blank, distant.
Cain noticed, but he didn’t say anything.
He was here.
That was all he had to offer.
Maybe it wasn’t enough. But it was honest.
Lila sighed, her eyes taking on a calculating look as she mentally sorted through a deck of thoughts and tossed away the ones she didn’t like.
“All right,” she said finally. “Let’s do it.”
Cain turned toward her. “The next one?”
“I know where a second farm is,” she said. “A cleaner one that has more wild monsters than sentients.”
Lexi’s jaw clenched.
“It’s run by a splinter syndicate,” Lila continued. “On the books, they call it ‘containment’, but it’s just commerce. Orcs, goblins, beastkin… kept long enough to produce children, then rotated out. Some get sold, others get put down for skill points. That sound like a worthy enough target for you?”
Cain took a moment to organize his thoughts before answering.
“Who runs it?”
“Someone cautious,” she said. “Stays off-record. Pays their taxes to the Guild to keep interference low. No enforcers, no paper trail. It’s their biggest vulnerability.”
“You want it gone.”
“I want it erased,” Lila said bluntly. “You go loud, I can spin it as a third-party raid. A bad contract, maybe. A mercenary group taking initiative. What matters is that they don’t trace it back to me.”
He glanced at Lexi.
She hadn’t moved.
He spoke quietly, almost to himself. “She shouldn’t come to this one.”
Lila raised an eyebrow. “And you think she’d listen?”
Cain shrugged.
She watched the beastkin for another second, then sighed.
“I’ll prep the route,” she said. “If we pick our targets right, we can knock out two, maybe three farms before we start turning heads. We want to keep this quiet until we’ve made a big impact.”
She turned toward the door, then paused.
“One more thing,” she said, without facing them. “You said you’re not here to help people.”
Lila looked over her shoulder, half-smiling.
“There are no ‘people’ down here.”
Then she left.
The door clicked shut behind her.
Cain sighed and looked at Lexi. She still hadn’t moved.
“You don’t have to come to the next one,” he said.
Her eyes finally met his.
“I do,” she said softly.
He gave her a long look, then turned away.
They both needed a moment to pretend that what they were about to do was okay.
***
They moved quickly.
Lila didn’t offer conversation on the way out. She led them through side streets and narrow alleys that stank of damp stone and oil. The Underworld had its own paths—routes that didn’t exist on any public map, just memory and favor.
She knew many of them.
The second skill point farm was a warehouse.
It looked almost identical to the first from the outside. Steel shutters, stacked crates, a fake front of merchant activity. No visible guards posted.
Lila’s briefing was short and sweet.
“23 confirmed bodies. 10 non-combatants, 4 handlers, 7 armed guards. The handlers and guards need to disappear, the rest…” She shrugged. “Your call.”
Cain nodded.
They entered like ghosts. Or maybe Cain was something worse.
Each step was a verdict.
His heel struck the back entrance like a war drum.
The lock detonated. The door crumbled inward, slamming the guard on the other side hard enough to lift him off the ground. He didn’t have enough time to scream.
=You have defeated (1) Human=
Cain was already moving.
A second guard instinctively reached for his blade—
Breakstep.
Cain launched across the floor like a cannonball. The man turned just in time to see a blur.
Crunch.
=You have defeated (1) Human=
Cain spun low and drove his elbow into a third man’s shin. The leg folded in half unnaturally, and the man dropped like a sack of meat. He stomped on the guard’s neck.
=You have defeated (1) Human=
Three enemies down in the space between heartbeats.
Chains whispered in the silence that followed.
Lexi rushed in behind him, quiet as a breath. Her eyes were empty as her chains coiled around a neck. She pulled and the man crumpled, choking on blood.
Room by room, they advanced. Cain took corners like a wrecking ball, shattering walls and cracking the floor. He threw open doors with enough force that even the walls seemed to shudder in fear.
The fourth door slammed open with a crack as Cain burst through, and this time the guards saw him coming.
“Who the fuck—” one of them started to shout.
Cain surged forward, shattering the man’s jaw. The force knocked him clean into the desk behind.
=You have defeated (1) Human=
A second guard lunged with a knife, slashing high.
Cain ducked low, grabbing the man’s wrist. He twisted.
Ligaments snapped and the man screamed.
He shoved the guard into the wall. Then harder. Again. Until the scream broke into silence.
=You have defeated (1) Human=
Lexi looped a handler’s ankle mid-run. The man fell screaming as she dragged him backward, his nails carving grooves into the wood.
Two more men rushed in from the corridor, blades raised, shouting over one another.
“It’s just two of them—!”
“Call Jerry!”
“They already killed Jerry!”
“What the fuck?!”
Breakstep.
In the blink of an eye, Cain appeared in front of them. He clipped the first with an elbow that snapped his neck and flipped the second over, slamming him headfirst into the floor.
=You have defeated (1) Human=
=You have defeated (1) Human=
The next room had rows of cages. One of the children in a cage freaked out when Cain entered the room. Several others started crying.
A handler was trying to drag one of the cages away by its base, panic making him sloppy.
Lexi’s chains wrapped around his wrist. This time, she walked forward, pulling him down to his knees one link at a time.
“Please—!” he begged. “I didn’t—”
Her eyes flicked to Cain.
He shrugged.
She pulled harder.
The handler fell flat, blood pooling around his temple before the sentence finished forming.
Cain turned his gaze toward the final man. Thin, balding, middle-aged. He clutched a ledger in both hands like a priest holding a holy text.
“I-I can explain—” the man stammered.
Cain stepped forward.
“No,” the man breathed, backing into the wall. “No, please. You don’t understand. I’m just the paperwork guy—”
He punched the paperwork guy in the face.
=You have defeated (1) Human=
The room was still.
Then someone sobbed.
It came from one of the cages—a small voice, maybe a girl, maybe a boy—choked and ragged. Then another followed. A dozen cries layered together. Some whispered, some wailed. It was a broken noise, the kind that sank straight into the bones.
Cain turned away from the corpse and walked to the center of the chamber. His coat, dark with dust and dried blood, whispered with each step.
He raised one hand.
A massive wardrobe landed on the floor.
The captives went silent.
Cain placed a hand against it, murmuring just loud enough for Lexi to hear.
“What am I even doing…”
The wardrobe creaked open.
He looked at the captives for the first time. His voice was quiet.
“If you can run, run. If you can crawl, crawl. If you can’t crawl… wait for someone who can. But get inside.”
A few children scrambled forward, tugging at cage bars. A girl with a bandaged eye started sobbing harder. A beastkin teen just stared, wide-eyed, at the wardrobe like it was a portal to another world. One of the beastkin children started to laugh—the sound was sharp, desperate, wrong.
“We’re dead,” the laughing child giggled. “We died and now the gods have come for our souls…”
Cain didn’t explain.
He just walked away.
The floor crunched under his boots as he rejoined Lexi in the corridor. Her chains were half-retracted now, dangling limp from her wrists. Her gaze was far away.
He looked at her.
“Hey,” he said softly.
She blinked.
“Still with me?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “But I can’t stop.”
She nodded after, almost to herself.
A door creaked.
Lila stepped through the far end of the hall, brushing soot off her jacket. She wrinkled her nose as she passed the corpses, then stopped beside Cain.
“That’s two,” she said. “Word hasn’t spread yet. You want a third?”
He didn’t answer right away.
“What are the options?”
She handed him a folded parchment. “Both are nasty. One’s a compound hidden in a dungeon—a fringe group with a small team but high volume. The other’s a government-blessed wild monster pen. Big and stable with a lot more security.”
Lexi’s head lifted slightly.
Lila continued, keeping her voice low. “The fringe one should be quick and easy, but…” Her jaw tensed. “Hitting the monster pen would change the game.”
Cain unfolded the parchment.
Two maps. Two locations.
One war.
He looked up, eyes cold and clear.
“I want the pen.”
Lila narrowed her eyes. “You sure about this?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “We do that, there’s no walking it back. No spinning it. The Acolyte’s Guild will know. The Thieves’ Guild will know. Everyone who profits from this shit will take it personally.”
He met her gaze.
“Good.”
She stared at him for a long moment, then smiled. “You’re serious.”
“You just figured that out?”
She glanced at Lexi, then back at him. “No, but now I’m certain. You’re 100% crazy.”
He grinned.
“That’s right.”
Lila looked down at the map again, silent.
Finally, she tucked it back into her coat. “Then I’ll take you there. But after this, we disappear. Hide out for at least a day. No one can trace this back to you, to me, to anyone. Your cousin can’t sell us out this time.”
Cain gave a single nod.
She turned on her heel.
“Come on,” she said. “If we’re gonna punch a hole in the city, we should do it before it wakes up.”
She walked ahead.
Cain lingered.
He looked back at the captives—at the flicker of dim light across the wardrobe’s open doors.
One of the younger beastkin looked up at him and whispered something.
Cain didn’t hear it.
But Lexi did.
She looked at the child. Then at Cain. Then lowered her eyes, ashamed.
Cain turned away and followed Lila into the dark.
Behind him, the wardrobe faded away, taking all the children with it.
Project Knightfall 